It is desirable to provide an entertaining game that may be played between two or more players in a private setting, or at a casino with players playing against a dealer. The game should provide entertainment value by blending elements of chance, strategy, and skill. Also, the game should be relatively simple to play and easy to learn, be readily transportable, and should facilitate betting to increase the competitiveness and excitement between the players.
Using dice introduces an element of chance and unpredictability to the game, which adds excitement. However, the game's entertainment value is limited if it is based solely on chance. Pitting one's strategy and skill against other players adds tension and further excitement to the game. To more fully exploit the opportunity to use strategy and skill in a dice game, it is desirable to expand the number of rollable combinations of conventional six-sided dice. The most popular method of determining the ranking of, say, a pair of rolled six-sided dice, is to merely add the value of the upturned faces of the two dice; this gives a maximum of 11 different combinations, i.e. from a two to a twelve. Such a limited number of combinations has a number of drawbacks, the most apparent being the difficulty in determining a winning roll when there are many players participating. U.S. Pat. No. 5,788,239 suggests a method of ranking a pair of dice that gives twenty-one different combinations and uses a system of letters to distinguish the ranking of combinations having the same additive value. While this method of ranking provides an expanded number of rollable combinations, this method is complicated and not easy to learn or memorize.
Provided that there is a suitable method of ranking the rollable combinations of dice, excitement can be added to the game by having players bet against each other and into a collective pot during the course of the game. Further, skill and strategy can be introduced into the game be allowing the players to have some degree of control over the frequency, amount and timing of betting, the number of rolls a player may make for a given turn, etc.